only audible, but retain their characteristic tones.

In the field of mechanics electricity is decidedly preferable to any
other agent. Heat may be transformed into motive power by a suitable
engine, but there its adaptability is at an end. An electric current
drives not only a motor, but every machine and tool attached to the
motor, the whole executing tasks of a delicacy and complication new to
industrial art. On an electric railroad an identical current propels the
train, directs it by telegraph, operates its signals, provides it with
light and heat, while it stands ready to give constant verbal
communication with any station on the line, if this be desired.

In the home electricity has equal versatility, at once promoting
healthfulness, refinement and safety. Its tiny button expels the
hazardous match as it lights a lamp which sends forth no baleful fumes.
An electric fan brings fresh air into the house--in summer as a grateful
breeze. Simple telephones, quite effective for their few yards of wire,
give a better because a more flexible service than speaking-tubes. Few
invalids are too feeble to whisper at the light, portable ear of metal.
Sewing-machines and the more exigent apparatus of the kitchen and
laundry transfer their demands from flagging human muscles to the
tireless sinews of electric motors--which ask no wages when they stand
unemployed. Similar motors already enjoy favour in working the elevators
of tall dwellings in cities. If a householder is timid about burglars,
the electrician offers him a sleepless watchman in the guise of an
automatic alarm; if he has a dread of fire, let him dispose on his walls
an array of thermometers that at the very inception of a blaze will
strike a gong at headquarters. But these, after all, are matters of
minor importance in comparison with the foundations upon which may be
reared, not a new piece of mechanism, but a new science or a new art.

In the recent swift subjugation of the territory open alike to the
chemist and the electrician, where each advances the quicker for the
other's company, we have fresh confirmation of an old truth--that the
boundary lines which mark off one field of science from another are
purely artificial, are set up only for temporary convenience. The
chemist has only to dig deep enough to find that the physicist and
himself occupy common ground. "Delve from the surface of your sphere to
its heart, and at once your radius joins every other." Eve